Working with the cloud has made many things easier, especially sharing files that are too large to send via email. The Munich-based startup Olmogo has now set itself the goal of revolutionizing this process: Instead of managing access rights through an administrator, the file itself knows who has access to it. In an interview, the founders explain their plans.
Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Olmogo: We are Aly Sabri, Mathias Wasserthal, and Heiner Hempel. Aly studied medicine and founded his first software company while still a student at Harvard. Mathias — also known as Wassi — and Heiner are computer science graduates and both virtuosos on their keyboards. We all live for data sovereignty in our modern, networked world and want to our solution Bring data fairness and control to businesses and consumers.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Olmogo: When we store data in the cloud or send it via email, it is not protected from third-party access. This is a particular problem for companies, doctors, lawyers, etc. But many consumers also want more control over their data. With Olmogo, you can be sure that only those who are supposed to see your data will see it.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
OlmogoThere are many solutions for encrypting data. Things get complicated when this data needs to be made available to third parties. Imagine you have 10 folders in a room for which 5 people have the key. But now you don't want person A to have access to folder 4. How do you solve this? Take away the key, and person A will also lose access to the other folders. Or you could take the folder out of the room, which isn't ideal either.
The entire business logic in the smallest information unit
This kind of problem can't occur with us, because each Mogo (in this example, each folder) knows who has access. A Mogo is the smallest unit of information in Olmogo and was invented by us. The Mogo contains the entire business logic and is therefore independent of any administration, such as setting access rights.
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Olmogo: The first challenge was to develop a truly sustainable concept for data sovereignty and data management. The second challenge was to integrate this complex technology into easy-to-use software. Now it's time to convince partners how easy data protection and data management can be with Olmogo. Olmogo can serve as the backend for all applications, thus significantly reducing development effort.
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Olmogo: We began developing Olmogo in 2017 and founded the GmbH (limited liability company) in January of this year. In this short time, we've already completed numerous pilot projects, including those with medical networks, a large hospital, tax consultants, and even private individuals who work with our turnkey solution Olmogo S3. In total, we already have just over 600 users and have received excellent feedback from all users.
Olmogo takes over the complete data management
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Olmogo: We consider Munich a good location for us and now want to reach out to startups, as we have a special partner program for young companies: They can integrate and use Olmogo's backend into their software free of charge, allowing them to focus entirely on UI and business logic during development. Olmogo handles the complex data management. No stress with GDPR and data security.
Munich Startup: Coworking or your own office?
Olmogo: We all work completely distributed and virtually across multiple locations. It's important to us that we allow for individuality—this way we attract the best employees and maintain high levels of motivation and output.
